Around Town: Bill C-9 Townhalls, Sugarcane, Kevin Vanhoozer . . .

Tamara Jansen will welcome fellow Conservative MP Andrew Lawton to a townhall meeting on Bill C-9 in Surrey.

Four local Conservative Members of Parliament will host an Ontario MP who is leading the charge against the Liberals’ Bill C-9, ‘An Act to amend the Criminal Code (hate propaganda, hate crime and access to religious or cultural places).’

The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada (EFC) highlighted Bill C-9 when they wrote to their supporters earlier this month about “five key bills and issues to watch and to engage in 2026”:

Bill C-9 is a new hate crimes bill introduced primarily at the request of Jewish communities after an alarming increase of antisemitism in Canada. It adds a definition of hatred and four new hate crime offences to the Criminal Code.

A parliamentary committee studying Bill C-9 has voted to change the bill so that it also removes an existing protection for religious expression.

The ‘good faith’ religious belief defence is one of four defences to the charge of wilfully promoting hatred. The defence has been used very few times and never successfully, but it is an important protection for minority religious groups whose beliefs don’t align with the majority. It ensures that the Criminal Code’s anti-hate provisions do not capture sincerely-held religious views expressed in good faith.

The Justice Committee will continue its review of Bill C-9 after the House of Commons resumes on January 26. After the committee is finished, the bill will return to the House of Commons for debate and votes, and then move on to the Senate. The EFC has wording and tips for communicating with your local MP about the bill.

The three townhalls will take place Thursday and Friday (January 22 – 23):

• January 22, 2:15 – 3:30 pm, Abbotsford: “Join MP Andrew Lawton, MP Brad Vis and MP Sukhman Gill for a conversation on Bill C-9 and the future of religious freedoms.”
• January 23, 1:45 – 3:45 pm, Richmond: “Keeping the good‑faith defence and focusing on real, violent crimes instead of targeting fundamental freedoms,” with MP Andrew Lawton and MP Chak Au.
• January 23, 7 – 9 pm, Surrey: “The Liberal government is trying to ram this bill through as soon as Parliament returns at the end of this month, so time is of the essence,” with MP Andrew Lawton and MP Tamara Jansen.

Sugarcane screening

Shaughnessy Heights United Church will host a film screening of Sugarcane.

The Reconciliation Matters Committee of Shaughnessy Heights United Church will host a film screening of Sugarcane this Saturday (January 24, 7 pm). 

Sugarcane has been widely praised and was nominated for an Academy Award.

National Geographic, which distributes the documentary, describes the film:

A stunning tribute to the resilience of Native people and their way of life, Sugarcane, the debut feature documentary from Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie, is an epic cinematic portrait of a community during a moment of international reckoning.

In 2021, evidence of unmarked graves was discovered on the grounds of an Indian residential school run by the Catholic Church in Canada. After years of silence, the forced separation, assimilation and abuse many children experienced at these segregated boarding schools was brought to light, sparking a national outcry against a system designed to destroy Indigenous communities.

Set amidst a groundbreaking investigation, Sugarcane illuminates the beauty of a community breaking cycles of intergenerational trauma and finding the strength to persevere.

Valerie Red-Horse Mohl wrote about the movie for Christianity Today:

As a documentary filmmaker myself, I appreciate the years of research that went into the making of Sugarcane. As a Christian – and Native American by heritage – I’m devastated by the shameful stories of violent sexual crimes and infanticide. It would be hideous if these crimes had been committed by hardened criminals. It’s all the more appalling that they were perpetrated by church leaders, entrusted to be child caretakers and preachers of the gospel.

The night after watching Sugarcane, I couldn’t sleep. I’d cringed, screamed and wept through the movie, and now I couldn’t stop thinking about it. My father, who was Cherokee and born on Indian territory in Oklahoma, was forced to attend a boarding school as a very young child. . . .

I continue to pray that the Native American community may understand the true nature of Jesus Christ: his love, his mercy, his support of children and others who are persecuted.

Some have found Sugarcane wanting. An article by Anna Farrow in The B.C. Catholic, for example, questioned the film’s integrity:

There are missing facts in the Sugarcane storyline that, by any fair evaluation, should exclude it from serious consideration as a documentary film, which are, after all, supposed to be treatments of verifiable facts.

But there is also a missed opportunity, because an honest examination of the role the Catholic Church played in this tragic story is needed. Perhaps next time without the scary music and black-cloaked villains.

So, the upcoming screening, followed by discussion and an online meeting with the co-director, present a valuable opportunity to gain more insight about Sugarcane and related issues.

(One good article to read ahead of the screening would be Douglas Todd’s interview with Aaron Pete, chief of Chawathil [Chowéthel] First Nation, and host of the popular podcast, Nuanced. He deals quite even-handedly with some of the issues raised in Sugarcane.)

The screening will be free and apparently there will even be popcorn and pop. There will also be “space for meditation and with resources for personal discussion with ministerial staff after the screening.”

The showing will be followed up by a Zoom discussion with Emily Kassie, Co-Director of Sugarcane, January 26, 6 pm.

Kevin Vanhoozer

Kevin Vanhoozer will be a guest of the Graduate & Faculty Christian Forum on Zoom.

Gordon Carkner, Director of UBC Graduate & Faculty Christian Forum (GFCF), has continued to introduce those on campus and beyond to a wide range of academic thinkers.

Next Tuesday (January 27, noon) he will host leading theologian and scholar Kevin Vanhoozer, by Zoom.

Vanhoozer (PhD, Cambridge University on Paul Ricoeur) is Research Professor of Systematic Theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He has written 12 books and is currently working on a three-volume systematic theology.

He will address the topic ‘Three Documents of the University: Reading Nature, Culture and Scripture Theologically’:

This presentation argues that the prevailing metaphysical frames of reference used today in the natural and human sciences, as well as in biblical studies, are ultimately unable to read rightly their respective texts.

Brief examples from each of the three books – the laws of nature; human dignity; the historical Jesus – illustrate both the problem and also the way forward. This involves a retrieval of a theological frame of reference that privileges biblical narrative and enables faith-fuelled scholarship to gain a deeper understanding of reality.

Jens Zimmermann, J.I. Packer Chair of Theology at Regent College, will respond to Vanhoozer’s talk. The author of several books – Humanism and Religion: A Call for the Renewal of Western Culture (Oxford University Press, 2012), Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Christian Humanism (Oxford University Press, 2019) and others – Zimmermann is also Director of the Houston Centre for Humanity and the Common Good.

Gordon Carkner

Gordon Carkner “is building bridges between church and university campus, believing we can serve each other in mutual enrichment and creative challenge.”

He has a PhD in Philosophical Theology from the University of Wales / Oxford Center for Mission Studies on late modern Western culture. 

Earlier GFCF talks can be viewed on YouTube. For example:

• John Owen: Challenges to Democracy;
• Abigail Favale: The Genesis of Gender;
• Denis Alexander: Coming to Faith Through Dawkins;
• John Lennox: Artificial Intelligence;
• Michael Ward: C.S. Lewis.

Events are listed below, but there is also an Events page and a Jobs page on the Church for Vancouver site.